Letters
LETTERS Polish Jewry To the Editor: Betsy Gidwitz rightly noted the disturbing significance of Mieczyslaw Moczar's return to prominence in Poland ("Poland 1981," MOMENT, March-April 1981). ......
...Mark Golub Akron, Ohio...
...Gidwitz does mention the Hebrew Department at Warsaw University, she does not mention the offical participation by that program's chairman in the last World Congress of Jewish Studies held in Jerusalem in 1977...
...The incredible social problems within Israel, poverty, inadequate housing, real tensions between economic classes—all these issues were simply swept aside...
...Federation in New York City for the past few years has been supporting Jewish educational projects without regard to the religious affiliation...
...A realistic attitude, combined with determination to continue to exist as one of North America's finest Jewish communities, will be most helpful in this high-minded endeavor...
...In your section, "The Voters Speak," you succeeded in avoiding feelings and opinions of Sephardic voters—who form the majority of the population...
...For some people with certain sensitivities, the public ceremony might not be suitable and could serve to counter that aspect of the wisdom of the rabbinic tradition...
...As befitting an East-bloc journal, there are the usual photos of tractor plants, steel mills and textile factories...
...I join with Mr...
...Rabbi Alexander M. Shapiro South Orange, New Jersey Quebec's Jews To the Editor: I want to extol the excellent research and presentation by Robert Kanigel ("Les Juives de Quebec," December 1980) Volume 6, No...
...Such was the case with a relative of mine, in a Miami nursing home, with not a relative or close friend to look after him, locally...
...I am a Jew from Indiana, and I, along with others who live in states with small Jewish populations, have been denied the right to choose a president all along by the Electoral vote...
...That is one of the reasons I supported Senator Bayh's reforms...
...This includes the vast majority of the members of Reform and Conservative congregations who are neither wicked nor deliberately exclude themselves from the Jewish religious heritage...
...Remarkably, the article succeeded in ignoring the existence of the majority of Israelis—namely those Jews of Sephardic and Middle Eastern background...
...The article describes me as having "soured" on New York City's Federation of Jewish Philanthropies and attributes to me the belief that the lack of substantial support by Federation for our school is "due in part to the cultural gap separating himself and the students at the Center from the more assimilated authorities at the Federation...
...Certain responsibilities make it difficult, if not impossible, to visit Florida, and for the cost of the airfare plus hotel accommodations for a week, LOVE CALL was able to visit and cheer the patient for an entire year...
...And the reality looms even larger as time goes on...
...These have been usually private ceremonies, but some may wish to consider a group and/or public ceremony of conversion...
...The constituent organizations of the Leadership Conference have different membership purposes and priorities...
...It is due rather to a "knowledge gap...
...Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso Indianapolis, Indiana Knowledge Gap To the Editor: I have read with interest the article describing our school by Edward Shapiro...
...Of even greater interest, however, is the fact that just this very year our congregation has committed itself to a new program of the integration of a new wave of Russian immigrants into the life of synagogue...
...As to news of Israel, according to one knowledgeable source, general reporting on Israel is limited by a curious standard, which can be summarized by the old adage: If you can't say something nice, then say nothing at all...
...There were even photocopies of letters of thanks from two Jewish survivors in Tel Aviv...
...If the Reform and Convervative movements claim the majority of American Jewry, should they not also claim the responsibility for the soaring intermarriage rates, the rampant assimilation, the community's near defenselessness in the face of the cult and missionary onslaught, and the demographic trends pointing to the virtual demise of the Jewish community within another generation...
...As an alternative, we might wish to consider, as a sequel to the conversion ceremony, to encourage Jews by Choice to join other Jews in what is becoming an ever increasing and meaningful ceremony, the "Adult Bar/Bat Mitzvah" (I prefer the Reconstructionist designation Ben/Bat Torah) ritual that would be preceded by additional serious study of the sources of our tradition and involvement in synagogue and community activities...
...Up to now some members of Federation have not recognized that special education is an integral part of the educational system...
...One member of the Board told me, "your projects should not be taking money away from the Fund for Jewish Education, you should be taking money from the "Ys...
...Kanigel's article as well as from my Quebec contacts, that early negative mental set has been to a large extent replaced by a tougher resiliency and flexibility with respect to the demands of Bill 101 that is traditionally reflective of the basic survival instinct of our people...
...I was roundly criticized by some leaders in the Jewish community of Quebec when I authored an article that appeared in Reform Judaism of April 1977 ("Quebec Jews On Edge") on the Jewish attitude toward the pequistes and their own provincial future...
...For their current spiritual leadership, however, the Haggadah directs us clearly to be less hospitable, until they abandon their antagonism towards our Torah heritage...
...The seriously impaired Jewish interests are really the interests of the New Yorkers and Californians who fear loss of political control...
...One article recounts the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of Degania, the first kibbutz...
...Kanigel addressed himself, as well as many of the individuals and surveys that he quoted...
...Articles deal with modern medicine, literary criticism, local Jewish communal histories...
...The lack of support to our school is not due to a cultural gap...
...I personally fully endorse the concept of public conversion ceremony, the meaning, purpose and impact of which Rabbi Syme's article has so grippingly brought to our attention...
...Beatrice Maier Southfield, Michigan Electoral Reform To the Editor: Mr...
...The "surrogate" caring served to soothe my over-active conscience, and the visitee was happy...
...While there are significant advantages to such a public ceremony, both for Jews by Choice and the born Jewish community, there is insight also in the teaching of our classical sources that a convert ought to be regarded as though he had always been a Jew...
...Rather, they are misled by their spiritual leaders who tell them that they are not bound by the authority of Torah law, and who sanction their wholesale assimilation into an alien culture without benefit of the Torah heritage, which alone can give them the strength and wisdom to survive as Jews...
...From what I can determine from Mr...
...Caitlin O'Sullivan/Elisheva bat Avraham v'Sarah...
...I agree with his major thesis that the Jews of Quebec, both institutionally and individually, have tended in the past to be passive and uninvolved in the political processes of the province, and that, by and large, have contributed in large degree to their own isolation and insulation in Quebec...
...While Ms...
...I suppose I should not be surprised by these omissions...
...It was my responsibility to conduct a workshop at the Conference, from which there emerged the recommendation that rabbis, congregations and prospective converts might consider making conversion ceremonies public and open events, rather than the usual private chapel or rabbinical study procedure...
...During summer of 1980, he even hosted the European conference of the Brit Ivrit Ha'Olamitt (World Hebrew Federation), which met in Warsaw and whose sessions were extensively reported in the Folks-ztyme...
...Having lived and worked in Quebec from 1972 to 1979 (a diminishing congregational base determined my departure for fiscal reasons), I know firsthand of the matters to which Mr...
...The Folks-ztyme was the first Communist-bloc journal to report Kruschev's attacks on Stalin at the Soviet Union's 20th Party Congress...
...1) in his article concerning the fate of the Jewish community of Quebec...
...Dorothy Jaffe South Bend, Indiana Public Conversion To the Editor: I was very moved to read the article by Rabbi Daniel Syme, "The Conversion of Caitlin O'Sullivan," which appeared in your June 1981/Sivan 5741 issue...
...There is however one point that I would like to clarify...
...Many people would apparently prefer to pretend that the Sephardic and Middle Eastern element of Israel is of no consequence...
...To be sure, Jewish agencies have played a vital role in the Leadership Conference since its inception 31 years ago...
...The writer describes the events and accomplishments of Degania without a trace of the negativism one might expect in a Soviet-style publication...
...In 1975 I accompanied a group of American college students to Auschwitz, where we successfully insisted upon gaining admission to the uncompleted Jewish pavillion, which had been left closed since shortly after the anti-Jewish campaign of the '60s...
...We are seeking to find ways of welcoming Russian immigrants into the synagogue to preserve the very same Jewishness that Rabbi Schwarz was concerned with together with his colleagues back in 1889...
...They are the victims and it is primarily those who purport to lead them who deserve the scorn and guilt...
...In fact, soon thereafter, it was my privilege to perform such a ceremony for a young woman who became a Jew by choice at the congregation that I then served, the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore, in Long Island...
...Lute CM To the Editor: I am writing in defense of "LOVE CALL" ("Surrogate children, no kidding" TSB March-April 1981) in Miami...
...Nathaniel Saperstein President, National Council of Young Israel New York, New York Plus ca change To the Editor: In response to the interesting document published in The Spice Box, pages 10 and 11, in the May 1981 edition, as the current rabbi of Oheb Shalom, I should like you to know that Congregation Oheb Shalom remains alive and well as it was in those days, although not currently in Newark...
...The criticism stemmed basically from indignation that the truth was brought to light for all the world to perceive, an obviously supersensitive reaction to the emerging situation...
...As an American serving a Reform Jewish congregation there, I was often frustrated by the lack of rhetoric and action of such outstanding organizations as the Canadian Jewish Congress, as well as by the seeming fearfulness of Holocaust regeneration that, it has been erroneously thought, would be potentially present in the neo-nationalistic context of the Parti Quebecois...
...According to editor Szmul Tenenblat, a personable man in his forties, who was born in independent Poland, but survived the war in the Soviet Union from which he returned with his family after 1945, his weekly has an average press run of 3,000 copies of which about one-third are sent to foreign subscribers—in America, West Europe and even the Soviet Union (interestingly, although Soviet citizens cannot themselves order the Folks-ztyme, they may receive it as a gift...
...In reading the article through, however, I find myself extremely puzzled—even upset...
...I know that they, as well as your readers, would be interested in knowing that the suggestion for a public conversion ceremony first emanated from a National Conference on Intermarriage, which took place on December 14 and 15, 1976 in New Jersey, sponsored by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropy's Commission on Synagogue Relations...
...The paper also carries correspondence from local chapters of the Social and Cultural Association of Polish Jews...
...Yet, for whom is the Folks-ztyme published...
...One can only hope that the Poles will be able to work out their fate without recourse to anti-Semitism as a cheap tool, endangering the miniscule remnant that becomes smaller with each passing month...
...When I mentioned this to a member of a national Jewish organization based in New York, I was assured that we had not had a minority president for many years...
...This leaves at most 2,000 copies for domestic circulation, of which many are not sold...
...The issue of 21 February includes two Yiddish articles that would do credit to any American Jewish periodical...
...These "white" organizations include the National Council of Churches and various Protestant denominations, the U.S...
...We moved the congregation, some 23 years ago, to South Orange, New Jersey...
...Entitled "A Holiday at the 'Mother of the Kibbutzim,' " the article is an account of a visit to Degania during the celebration...
...Each issue does carry rather dull lead articles about ^ national issues, like the failing economy, largely taken from the official Polish press agency...
...Ralph G. Neas Executive Director Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Washington, D.C...
...That is not so...
...Such articles are nothing like the acid tone of Sovietish Heymland...
...Perhaps then this was the first public conversion ceremony in the larger New York area...
...Kanigel in the hope that the Jewish community in Quebec will be able to carry on successfully in future years in a Quebec that never will be the same as it was...
...Few members of the Allocation Board at Federation really understand special education...
...Such criticism is rather overblown...
...You might also be interested to know that in addition to Zvi Shachori, your correspondent, there are one hundred descendants of Rabbi Schwarz still actively involved in the life of our congregation...
...The Electors are not bound by any law to vote for the winning candidate at the time that the Electoral College meets...
...Gidwitz characterizes it as "excruciatingly dull and boring," carrying no news about Israel...
...Catholic Conference and several other Catholic organizations, the AFL-CIO and the major international unions, the National Association of Social Workers and a number of social welfare agencies, as well as organizations of women, the aged and the handicapped...
...Rabbi Aharon H. Fried, Dean, The Jewish Center for Special Education Brooklyn, New York Misled Majority To the Editor: You should more carefully read the text of the Passover message of the President of the National Council of Young Israel before you write an editorial ("For Shame," May 1981) totally distorting its clear meaning, and then attacking the straw man you have created...
...They are all united, however, in a common commitment to the Conference's goals of "equality in a free plural, democratic society...
...The Guidelines on Conversion issued by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association in January of 1979, following three years of study and deliberation on the part of the Commission on Gerut of the R.R.A...
...The Folks-ztyme once appeared four times weekly, but now comes out once weekly in a 12 page edition in large format, including a three page Polish section...
...While the sarcasm of the article is not lost on me, I would like to point out that other than parents, there are family members to whom one would like to pay more attention than time and/or finances will allow...
...While this cultural arrogance may appeal to some, it is extremely unrealistic, unfair, and damaging to the well-being of the State of Israel...
...As for having "soured" on Federation—"frustrated by" might be a better description, but not "soured...
...Thank you for sharing this wonderful tidbit of American history with your readers and with our congregants...
...Berukha Haba-ah...
...Regardless of the degree of veracity in the exhibit's claims, the sick irony of such an ode to Moczar after 1968 was probably one of the motives for keeping the Jewish Pavillion at the Auschwitz Museum closed until it could be renovated...
...Special Education, Yeshiva Style," May 1981) Judging by the number of requests for help and information we have received from your readers around the country, you have done them a great service by publishing this article on Jewish special education...
...However, we think it's important to set the record straight regarding his statement that "whites involved in the Leadership Conference are virtually all Jews...
...The text of my message was accurately quoted, but you then ignore the statement that, of the four sons of the Haggadah, the bulk of the American Jewish community must be identified with the simple son who "must be invited to rejoin us in the practice of our beautiful religious heritage and way of life...
...Alvin Schiff and Dr...
...Unfortunately, this has not included Jewish special education...
...Regular features include Polish translations of Sholem Aleichem, reprints of articles from the pre-1939 Yiddish press, summaries of recent Holocaust research, the resurgence of Nazism and anti-Semitism in the West...
...Yet the Folks-ztyme also carries significant material of Jewish interest: reports of Jewish cultural activities in France, South Africa, Argentina, Los Angeles, New York and even Israel...
...May your example instruct many in the paths of Torah...
...Tens of thousands of baalei tshuva [those who return to righteous living] have already voted with their feet, abandoning the failed ideologies of the Reform and Conservative movements to rediscover the joys of authentic Jewish living through our Torah tradition and a life of Mitzvos according to Halacha...
...When the shepherds lead their flocks over the precipice, only a fool can condemn the sheep...
...This time some of us will know better how to fight for it...
...I have reason to believe that things will change for the better in the future...
...Just for the record...
...I was too stunned by the stupidity of the response to even comment on it...
...A variety of issues were presented, and a number of Israeli voters indicated what was on their minds...
...The overwhelming majority of children in Israeli grade schools are of Sephardic and Middle Eastern background...
...I know of the work of Rabbi Syme and Lydia Kukoff, to whom he makes reference in the article, as the one who has recently popularized the idea of a "public conversion Ceremony...
...Her statement of acceptance of Judaism is a document that ought to be shared with all prospective Jews by Choice in an effort to encourage them to compose their own declaration of acceptance...
...On the other hand, substantially more then one-half of the 150 national organizations that comprise the Conference are neither Jewish nor racial...
...Such a religious service would emphasize the covenantal link established mutually between the convert and function of sensitizing the community to the need to welcome and support the convert (Hakhnasht Hager...
...Through the efforts of people like Dr...
...My other reason is a simple Constitutional fact...
...I feel, however, that this is an issue in which the rabbi has to exercise great sensitivity and tact...
...Certain holidays, such as Hanukkah, Shavuot, Simchat Torah, lend themselves particularly to such a ceremony...
...Speakers at this first-of-its-kind Conference included Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Rabbi David Bleich, Professor Mervin Verbit, Rabbi Robert Gordis, Rabbi Bernard Bamberger (zikhrono livrakhah), among others, who made major presentations on the subject of mixed marriage, intermarriage and conversion to the assembly of 100 rabbis and Jewish leaders representing various Jewish religious movements and organizations...
...Federation spokesmen are correct when they cite the dramatic growth in Jewish education in recent years...
...Even in the matter of orthography the Polish Yiddish weekly shows its difference from the Soviet monthly: where the Soviets enforce use of a de-Hebraized Yiddish, the Folks-ztyme continues to use the traditional spellings...
...To my shock, I found an exhibit in Polish honoring Mieczyslaw Moczar for having rescued Jews during the Second World War...
...Rabbi Syme's description of the events that led to Caitlin's conversion is very touching...
...The future of Polish Jewry's remnant is obviously problematic...
...All of which make the Folks-ztyme very different from Sovietish HeymlancTs unrelenting tone...
...Martin Schloss of New York City's Board of Jewish Education, the people allocating the funds for Jewish education have received an education...
...The reform of the Electoral College will surface again...
...Robert Moses Shapiro Baltimore, Maryland Israel's Majority To the Editor, In your June 1981 issue, you included a report on the election in Israel...
...Recently there were articles regarding Menachem Begin's chances for re-election, yet those articles have not been any more critical of him than the published opinions of at least some American Jews...
...Rabbi Marc D. Angel New York, New York Civil Whites To the Editor: We enjoyed your "Interview with Bookie" (May 1981), and the insightful comments of this long time supporter of civil rights...
...In fact there are a number of Orthodox and ultra Orthodox members on the Federation Board...
...of which I have served as Chairman, makes the following statement in Article V, Section 7: A religious ceremony of acceptance of Judaism should be celebrated following the completion of ritual requirements and the beit din session...
...Perlmutter's comments on the Electoral College reform ("More On Anti-Semitism," May 1981) proposed by Senator Birch Bayh rekindled, for me, the bitterness and anger with which I observed the high-handedness of the east and west coast Jewish leaders as they scuttled the proposal...
...The decline of the Yiddish-speaking population has been reflected in the decline of Yiddish publishing...
...We welcome them with open arms, and we cordially invite the masses of American Jews who are members of Reform and Conservative congregations, or no congregation at all, to redeem their Jewish birthright and reclaim their religious heritage through the Young Israel movement or any other segment of the Orthodox community...
Vol. 6 • July 1981 • No. 7
